Friday, 8 June 2012

To
see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of
the great human experiences. It is not as if they had gone over the
horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by
other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. It is simply
that they came to nothing. Since we have always shared all things with
them and have always had a part of their strength and, certainly, all
of their knowledge, we shared likewise this experience of annihilation.
It was their annihilation, not ours, and yet it left us feeling that
in a measure we, too, had been annihilated. It left us feeling
dispossessed and alone in a solitude, like children without parents, in
a home that seemed deserted, in which the amical rooms and halls had
taken on a look of hardness and emptiness. What was most extraordinary
is that they left no mementoes behind, no thrones, no mystic rings, no
texts either of the soil or of the soul. It was as if they had never
inhabited the earth. There was no crying out for their return. They
were not forgotten because they had been a part of the glory of the
earth. At the same time, no man ever muttered a petition in his heart
for the restoration of those unreal shapes. There was always in every
man the increasingly human self, which instead of remaining the
observer, the non-participant, the delinquent, became constantly more
and more all there was or so it seemed; and whether it was so or merely
seemed so still left it for him to resolve life and the world in his
own terms.

It
is as if we had stepped into a ruin and were startled by a flight of
birds that rose as we entered. The familiar experience is made
unfamiliar and from that time on, whenever we think of that particular
scene, we remember how we held our breath and how the hungry doves of
another world rose out of nothingness and whistled away. We stand
looking at a remembered habitation. All old dwelling places are subject
to these transmogrifications and the experience of all of us includes a
succession of old dwelling places, abodes of the imagination,
ancestral or memories of places that never existed.

This will last. Six decades on, reading this, we can still live the experience that Stevens lived that day he stepped into the ruins and the doves rose up and vanished: an essential honesty of mind and heart, the feeling of awe before wild nature; and the melancholy recognition that humankind feels okay to be all-there-is. That last image is haunting and dream-like.

Ah, brilliant! I'd never read this, and am now frantically searching for a full copy. Elsewhere I'm planning a reading group on "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," and am thinking right now that this would be very good to incorporate.

It's not such a great surprise, when one thinks of it, that the gods should have taken themselves off as we entered. One has experienced that sort of thing before, and it would be dishonest really, to deny the meaning of it to oneself.

And this is perhaps more responsibility than we ought to have been left with:

"There was always in every man the increasingly human self, which instead of remaining the observer, the non-participant, the delinquent, became constantly more and more all there was or so it seemed; and whether it was so or merely seemed so still left it for him to resolve life and the world in his own terms."

So there we have it. We can't chase off something that was already gone.

As a raw and vile youth (1967) one took part in a collaborative poem with a fellow callow contender for the laurels. In this poem God dares enter the picture, but is affrighted, as vampires are meant to be by whatever it is, crucifixes, silver stakes & c.

The poem in question reacts to the divine intervention with predictable rudeness:

"Smuh!

God get out of here

And he runs off chirping and chucking into his handbag."

Now one can only call that bit inhospitable.

The poem in question goes on to add:

"What is happening here

is that the brain tissue is momentarily

a noodle."

That bit proves to have been prescient beyond its years.

Perhaps even Stevens did not phrase the central pathos here as well as Hazen has done:

"...the melancholy recognition that humankind feels okay to be all-there-is."

And yes, oh yes, "That last image is haunting and dream-like."

Also affecting to dwell upon this:

"...while we may work towards a resolution of life, it's not clear that this is a possibility."

And it's clearer every day now that this is not clear, and that it is growing unclearer with the hour.

Still one struggles on, as though there were not another option. The memory aflutter with phantom gods.

Steven Ratcliffe points to the contingency of the matter, the ‘as if.’ There’s an absence of certain things— like mementoes—things not there, yet called into being by Stevens from his ‘abodes of the imagination’ and his ‘memories of places that never existed.’ We begin to wonder. We are looking into Stevens world, but from our own; or maybe it’s the other way round. This is one of the most appealing things about this piece.

The gods may be gone, but we are still here to populate our ghost towns. In imagination at least; still thinking that if we hang around the vacated sites long enough, something might even happen. Absence makes the heart grow full with longing for that darn something.

I've been home a long time among the vast porticos, Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires, Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold Render them the same, this evening, as caves with basalt spires.

The swells' overwhelming accords of rich music, Heaving images of heaven to the skies, Mingle in a way solemn and mystic With the colors of the horizon reflected by my eyes.

It was here I was true to the voluptuous calm, The milieu of azure, the waves, the splendors, And the nude slaves, all impregnated with odors,

Who refreshed my brow with waving palms My only care to bring to meaning from anguish The sad secret in which I languish.

Memory (Excerpt) - Holderlin

But it is rich,Full of dark light,This fragrant cup Of sleep; it's sweet Under the shadow of slumber.It's not good to thinkThe mortal is soulless. But it’s good to converseIn the voice of the heartAnd hear much as love emergesAnd acts, occurrences happen.

But where are my friends? BellarminWith his companion? Some are afraidTo go to the source;Where the wealth begins,In the sea. They,Like painters, pull together The beauty of the Earth and disdainWar not winged, and Live for years alone, belowThe leafless mast, where night does not shine throughThe city's festivities,Nor its strings and indigenous dances.

But now the Indians areThe people left,There on the airy spit, And mountains of grapes fallTo the Dordogne, which alongWith the mighty Garonne Empties to the seaThat comes from the stream. Abounding,It gives memories to the waters,And to the lovers' eyes entwined,But what remains, the poet finds.